The Perfect Glass Paradigm: Disordered Hyperuniform Glasses Down to Absolute Zero

TL;DR

This paper introduces the concept of perfect glasses, a new class of amorphous, hyperuniform, mechanically stable states achieved through specific interactions, existing down to absolute zero and expanding the understanding of glass physics.

Contribution

It presents a theoretical model of perfect glasses using multi-body soft interactions that eliminate crystalline phases and demonstrate hyperuniform, mechanically stable amorphous states at zero temperature.

Findings

Perfect glasses are hyperuniform and mechanically stable down to absolute zero.

The model uses two-, three-, and four-body soft interactions.

Perfect glasses cannot crystallize due to configuration-space trapping.

Abstract

Rapid cooling of liquids below a certain temperature range can result in a transition to glassy states. The traditional understanding of glasses includes their thermodynamic metastability with respect to crystals. However, here we present specific examples of interactions that eliminate the possibilities of crystalline and quasicrystalline phases, while creating mechanically stable amorphous glasses down to absolute zero temperature. We show that this can be accomplished by introducing a new ideal state of matter called a "perfect glass." A perfect glass represents a soft-interaction analog of the maximally random jammed (MRJ) packings of hard particles. These latter states can be regarded as the epitome of a glass since they are out of equilibrium, maximally disordered, hyperuniform, mechanically rigid with infinite bulk and shear moduli, and can never crystallize due to configuration-space trapping. Our model perfect glass utilizes two-, three-, and four-body soft interactions while simultaneously retaining the salient attributes of the MRJ state. These models constitute a theoretical proof of concept for perfect glasses and broaden our fundamental understanding of glass physics. A novel feature of equilibrium systems of identical particles interacting with the perfect-glass potential at positive temperature is that they have a non-relativistic speed of sound that is infinite.